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Hello, Elle!
Yes, calm down,
You are utterly pacific most of the time!
Oh, Anne Bradford is the queen bee all right!
The setters the Times uses will probably set for any paper that pays them. I think they freelance. (Now, why "freelance". Where did that come from?)
Araucaria of the Guardian was a reknowned setter for that paper, but he set for other papers, too.
I think he was Cine Phile in the FT.
Cine Phile is an anagram of Chile Pine, which is another name for Araucaria (monkey puzzle tree).
And Rossim does not think there is a nut in a cupcake?
So....?

Hi, Rusty!
Ah, I see..... so possibly one of the setters who so loves to put "Londonisms" in the Times may well be responsible for Peg's clue.....I didn't realise that so many of the crossword compilers wrote for papers across the board.
(It is quite a good clue, too!)
I didn't know, for instance, that "Araucaria" (Chile Pine ) who compiled Xwords for the Guardian was aka "Cine Phile" in the Financial Times!
Where do you acquire all this information?
The word "freelance" was coined by Sir Walter Scott, in "Ivanhoe".
It is a term for a knight with no specific allegiance to any particular cause.
I'm still not clear though about "cupcake" meaning both a mad person and being a term of endearment!

Hello, Elle!
It has been written in the press that setting crosswords is not well paid, hence they do as many different ones as they can.
One sideline that Araucaria (his name was John Graham) had was setting individual crosswords.
For instance he would do a personalised crossword if you paid him. Say, you had a relative and wanted to give an unusual gift, you would let Araucaria know all about the person.
Name, family, hobbies etc and he would set that crossword for that person, and send it to you.
It gave him additional income.
I did not know about "freelance". Bit like "mercenary"?
I would not know a cupcake if I saw one, to know if it was mad or endearing or very tasty to eat!
Maybe we don't have them up here!

Hi, Rusty!
I love the idea of the personalised crossword! I think that would make a lovely gift for someone!
I did not know that one could do that?
Rusty, you must have cupcakes? they are small individual cakes baked in a small paper or tinfoil case. You see them in cake shop windows. You see them in packets on a supermarket shelf! Fairycakes - you must know fairycakes? - are a typical example.
( Ask the girls if they know of fairycakes! )
Maybe it is just the term "cupcake" with which you are unfamiliar? I am sure you must have encountered the cakes themselves?
I feel that I have had a traumatised day........stress is not good for me!
Coffee.......then bed!

Hello, Elle,
Yes, you can get a personalised crossword.
It is a good idea, especially for a crossword nut!
Type "Custom cryptic crosswords" into your Google and it will all be revealed. The two named setters are Boatman and Enigmatist of the Guardian, plus unnamed setters.
Araucaria has passed on, unfortunately.
They are not cheap, though!
And they need a good bit of notice.
Well, I would not be good at knowing different cakes, d'ye see?
Untalented in that field!
Cupcake is a new word to me, and that is OK.
I like exploring the language.
Fairycakes sound familiar, though.

Rusty
Cupcakes are big in London, apparently you can pay Northwards of £2 for one! For a while they were the cake of choice for weddings (easy to take home, except they need expensive packing).
I was once asked to make 145 cupcakes for a wedding (plus a small fruitcake for the cutting ceremony, which was my idea).
Had to make them two days before so they would be fresh. It took 2 people a whole day to decorate them and a friend several days to construct a tower to display them.
Four friends lent me underbed storage boxes etc to transport them.
Each cake decorated with entwined initials, 290 of them, varnished both sides, gold stars and candied orange peel (made that too).
And only half the guests made it, due to snow!

Hi everyone,

Rosalind, I admire your talent at cake making - I remember not that long ago you were making icing for a big cake you had made.

Are you a good cook as well? I mean savoury dishes?

Good morning, Rusty!
A beautiful morning here - the sun is shining, the sky is blue, the temperature has dropped to about 3C, so much fresher. It was good to be out!
I believe it is supposed to rain later, but we'll enjoy this whilst we can!
Ros has just told you about cupcakes "en masse" so to speak! Yes, they were all the rage a while back for big functions like weddings... small individual cakes built up into a "tower" or similar.
I had no idea about cost for an individual small cake, as I rarely eat cake!
Another occasion when they "appear" is for school Summer Fetes - mums bake them and decorate each one lavishly to sell on their child's class stall!
My grandsons always want to 'buy back' their mum's donations!
What do you have planned for today? Any bacon rolls on the agenda?
.........now that is what we could do with in the park in the mornings.......a Costa coffee stall, also selling bacon butties!

Morning Ros and Pigale!
As always, I admire your talent and your energy, Ros, for doing these things!
You sound to have made many "interesting" cakes for people at various times!
It would make an unusual and lucrative career, I would think? Have you ever made cakes professionally? as in, getting paid for doing it?
You like doing creative things, too, Pigale, don't you. I'm useless at things like that - probably because I'm just not interested.
But I do admire the talent in other people!

Hello Elle,

Yes, I enjoy manual work - except pastry where I am hopeless!
I love all DIY jobs and have done plenty of it in the first house we bought in France. I enjoy gardening, knitting, model making - all this is much more fun than housework which I loathe !

When in Guernsey, I used to give a couple of French/English lessons after work twice a week so that I would not feel guilty at having a lady in for house chores, including ironing. The bungalow was big and I refused to work all week-end at home as well - and my husband was in full agreement, he preferred his wife to be free to enjoy the week-end with him.